Every Sense and Nonsense
by debbiechan
Summary: Setting is post-Arrancar arc. UlquiHime from Ulquiorra's POV


**Every Sense and Nonsense**

by debbiechan

Disclaimer: There is no heart without Kubo-sensei. He owns Bleach, along with Studio Perriot, Viz Comics and others. I write fanfic for my own pleasure and not for financial profit.

Description: Rated G. Setting is post-Arrancar arc. UlquiHime from Ulquiorra's POV.

f_or enisy, don't stop imagining_

Seeing was believing.

Ulquiorra had no reason to doubt the green fields wavering before him, but he did. The landscape seemed wrong-the world should be sandy and dull. These hills should be dead but they were moist and animated with color: the little blades that covered them kept rolling in the wind from a dark shade to a brighter one and back to darkness.

He had no reason to doubt, but he had no memory of having been anywhere else. He knew his own name-that was all. _Ulquiorra._

By the time the sun fell and the moon rose over the fields, Ulquiorra remembered that he had died in another world, _Hueco Mundo_.

Moonlight turned the disturbingly vivid landscape into familiar monotones. Where was he?

The more significant question was one that he did not ask himself until it was plain that the passage of time was weakening him somehow and the hole missing from his body had taken with it some measure of his former clarity, independence, and strength: _Who _was he?

He walked for days and nights and felt that he was not physically weaker, that in fact his reiatsu seemed stronger, but the very awareness of his physical body annoyed him.

T_his hand wants to open and close when my mind doesn't will such a thing. I inhale, intending to take in only so much air, but my lungs keep expanding. The sigh of air coming out is too long. This is ridiculous. I am like an animal. This is nonsense._

He wanted something badly but didn't know what it was. Certainly it wasn't the company of others-he avoided others as long as he could but a lust for information eventually drove him to the outskirts of a settlement.

The children on a bridge told him. "Oh you must be a new soul. You're in Soul Society." The children were casting poles with strings attached into the water beneath the bridge. To catch fish, they said. They all chattered about how fish are tasty when broiled with shoyu.

Ulquiorra was aware of a deep hunger inside his belly. So that was it.

A line twitched, the water splashed, and one boy brought a small glistening live thing out of the water. Ulquiorra snatched the fish from the line.

"Hey!" the boy protested.

The taste of tiny bones and brittle scales in Ulquiorra's mouth was disgusting, but he finished the whole fish in two more bites and wanted more. "What else is there to eat?" he asked.

"He's strong," said one child to another.

"Strong souls need to eat," said the boy whose fish had been stolen. He eyed Ulquiorra warily. "Um. You can eat fruits on the trees. The pears are good but the persimmons are bitter."

Souls had never had a particular flavor-they had satisfied a need and that was all. For once, Ulquiorra was curious about flavors. For once, his longing had a destination. He narrowed his eyes, imagined the taste of broiled fish with shoyu-it was not something he had ever eaten but would it take away the memory of the disgusting fish he'd swiped from the line?

"It was mean to steal my fish." the boy said. "You can get your own."

"If he's a strong soul and needs to eat all the time," a girl ventured, "then he needs to find a family. Someone can teach him to cook."

Ulquiorra walked away before he could hear more.

So he was in Soul Society according to the children. Warriors called _Shinigami_ had come from here so it would serve his purposes to find them. He walked for more days and nights, avoiding villages, marveling at the noisiness of even unpopulated areas. Birds and crickets chirped incessantly. This land of the Dead teemed with a liveliness unheard of in Hueco Mundo.

_Shut up, birds. _He fought the urge to aim at trees.

He no longer had Hollow powers. He didn't need to point to a tree and try to summon them like a fool to discover that.

Yet he sensed that he was stronger than before his death. It was a weird strength, a vitality that grew with every breath that filled and left his chest.

Certainly his senses were sharper and that was timely-there was so much new information to process. His body was more or less the same as it had been in Hueco Mundo. No Arrancar mask, no hole in his chest. He was wearing a thin white kimono now and sandals exposing his ankles to the strange moist air. Parts of him felt lighter than before and parts felt heavier. Walking and walking over fields and fields of green, he kept expecting to find his balance but something felt off-

The first fruit he picked fit perfectly inside his palm, and the weight of it surprised him. The fruit was not heavy but his desire for it was. Ulquiorra was not accustomed to desire shaping his perception of objects this way.

The fruit was soft red on the outside and dewy white on the inside. The taste on the tip of his tongue and on the roof of his mouth burned him with its sweetness.

He closed his eyes.

That's when the destination of his longing shifted with a violence that made him drop to his knees.

He was not that weak from hungering for apples.

He could see her in every detail the way she was the last time he had seen her: _So beautiful._

The woman's bottom lip the color of the fruit's rind, her eyes alive with a sweet sweet sadness. Her hand outstretched-

The memory vanished. The wind blew strands of hair across his face, and eyes still closed, Ulquiorra felt his every sense surge for an answer. The scent of the fruit filled his head, the sun colored the inside of his eyelids bright red, and although he understood that he wanted to touch the woman, nothing touched him now except the fingers of the wind.

W_oman … woman …._

It was a long time before he rose to his feet.

I_'ve been through this nonsense before._

This time he could answer his longing with his imagination. He willed his palm to open and his fingers to move, and then he closed his fist again with slow deliberation.

I_'ve been through this nonsense before and I'll go through this nonsense again._

END


End file.
